


in every season

by aziraphic



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 07:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16214579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aziraphic/pseuds/aziraphic
Summary: They have so much to learn from one another and so much more to learn together.





	in every season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



~~~~~

Even in the autumn, when the leaves of other trees blaze with the fiery hues of sunset, the mountains of Archenland are green. It is the dark green and blue of spruce and pine trees, rather than the lighter green fronds and tall curved trunks of palms, with needles and pine cones growing freely instead of sweet dates. The ground is different as well; packed loam or pebbled dirt held together by the roots of trees rather than shifting sands or dry soil with only the roots of low scrub plants to contend with. It’s a different kind of mindset to think of walking or hiking here, when back in Calormen people seldom strolled outdoors for pleasure, and did not venture too far from their villages, towns, or cities, their notion of the wilderness being sere and uninviting, sun-scorched desert rather than shady forest. Places like this only existed as far-off exotic lands for heroic adventurers in the stories to visit, and as for characters like the Narnian queen - she could never have imagined them actually existing, back when she’d been growing up in her father’s house listening to the storytellers.

“This looks like a good spot,” Lucy says, reining in her horse at the edge of a clearing, carpeted by fallen needles, some brown and dry from previous seasons, but soft enough still to muffle even the noise of hoofbeats. She and Aravis are alone today for this particular excursion, mostly by design. Neither of them are dressed in court finery, but rather in sturdy, workaday clothes that would not show dirt easily, and Lucy wears her sword buckled at her waist, expertly avoiding tripping on the point of it as she dismounts from her horse.

Almost from their first meeting in Anvard, Aravis had wanted to learn more about Lucy’s skill with a sword. Her own experience stemmed mostly from her brother when they were both younger, before he’d left home that final fateful time to put down rebellion in the west, but few of the other ladies of her acquaintance were instructed in such things, though there were those who had some little knowledge of using a dagger for their own defense. But in Narnia it seemed almost commonplace for young women to have some martial ability, even to compete in the grand tournaments held at Cair Paravel, which was unheard of in the courts of Calormen; whether that was Narnian tradition or the influence of their younger queen was a matter of great curiosity for her.

Aravis had brought her own weapon along as well - a fine scimitar in a jeweled scabbard gifted by some past delegation to the court of Anvard that she’d found after much searching in the royal treasury of King Lune - because it seemed Lucy was equally curious about the Calormene style of fighting, since her own skill was with longsword and rapier, bow and arrow. Aravis holds tight to it on her own dismount from her horse (not Hwin, that dear Mare, who was enjoying herself in Narnia, but one of the well-trained geldings from King Lune’s stables), not as practiced as Lucy, but she manages with some measure of grace. At least enough not to embarrass herself in front of the Narnian queen.

“It’s been years since I last tried to fight with a scimitar,” she warns pre-emptively, _or at all_ , hoping she doesn’t sound as nervous as she feels. Not that she believes Lucy would hurt her, but it would be a shame not to make a good show of it, at the very least. “My older brother was the one who taught me, and only in his spare time.” And there had not been very much of it, between his campaigns...

Lucy just smiles and shakes her head, the few beams of light filtering through the needles gilding her short hair (Aravis thinks on her own long hair, which is carefully braided and securely tied back so as not to fall in her eyes or get in her way). “This will be fun,” she declares with a grin, unsheathing her sword and treading the ground, testing her footing and balance with an expert air. It would almost be intimidating if she didn’t also look so good-naturedly excited, a skilled fighter anticipating an interesting match.

Aravis can only hope she’s up to the task.

The first clash of blades is strangely thrilling, though they are both being cautious since neither of them is wearing armor. Lucy is very much stronger than Aravis is, being more in practice, but there are oddities about the Northern style - the shape of the blades of their long sharp swords, the use of footwork to keep distance, the emphasis on thrusting motions, brushing aside the blades of their opponents to create vulnerabilities before driving the points home - that Aravis starts to slowly pick up a rhythm to counter effectively. She tries to take full advantage of the curve of her own blade, sharp all along its edge, halting a strong attack with the wider back before twisting to try and regain the upper hand. Lucy looks more and more pleased each time Aravis surprises her, dancing out of the way and back in before demanding that she _do that again, if you please_. By the time Lucy calls an end, Aravis is exhausted, and even Lucy’s hair is damp with sweat and clinging to her forehead.

"I hope you realize I’m not going to let you fall _out_ of practice again,” Lucy threatens, smiling down at Aravis, who is collapsed on her back, heedless of the needles poking her hair and clothes. Aravis opens her mouth to answer - likely something short, very possibly rude - but she stops. Lucy’s eyes are shining above her cheeks, pink with exertion and excitement, and whatever response she might have thought of before dies on her lips, and she averts her gaze almost shyly after a long fraught moment.

An accord of sorts had passed between them, and there is an acknowledged but unresolved weight to Aravis’ words when she asks:

“Then we can do this again?”

They practice as often as they can for the rest of Lucy’s visit, mostly in private, though now and again Lucy will bring Aravis to watch the training of the guardsmen in Anvard ( _research_ , she calls it, though Aravis would much rather observe Lucy) and get more of a sense of how the soldiers of the North fight. All too soon, it seems Lucy must depart again, and the only comfort for Aravis is that the Narnian queen seems (just a bit, perhaps) reluctant to leave.

“I’ll come back again soon,” She promises, holding Aravis’ hands in hers, who can only nod, and determine to herself not to disappoint her the next time they met.

~~~~

Aravis awakens to the rustle of a mild wind through evergreen boughs, the dripping of snow melting off a peaked roof - and the soft, muffled, rhythmic thump- _splat_ of snowballs hitting a glass window pane. It is, unsurprisingly, utterly unlike the whispery cascade of sand grains in multitudinous chorus, the dry whistle of wind among the dunes, the dry shifting palm leaves in a chill night breeze. Winters in Calormen were mild - at least during the day - and damp with intermittent rain, but here in the North the seasons passed with more clarity, and Aravis delights in the contrast, the visible march of time in a yearly cycle to which she was slowly growing more accustomed.

As she moves to get out of bed, the first shock of cold is mitigated by the warmly lined slippers set next to her bed and the similarly layered robe hanging above it, the fire - freshly stoked while she still slumbered - crackling merrily in the fireplace, and the soft carpet that served as insulation from the chill of stone and wood, a pattern in warm reds and browns and golds that reminded her of home. She quickly wraps herself up in the prepared layers and runs for the window to unlatch it, just in time for another well-packed sphere of snow to sail in through the open space and splatter on the floor, quickly melting in the heat of her bedroom and soaking the edges of the rug.

“Why did you not wait for me to wake up?” she calls out, leaning out of the aperture and waving one arm in greeting, still smiling.

Lucy the Valiant, Queen of Narnia under the High King Peter, Protector of the Lone Islands and Lady of Cair Paravel, Keeper of the Western Woods - and so on, clad not in her full armor, but well wrapped against the cold, waves in return from where she stands, a small pile of chilly ammunition at her feet in the courtyard. “Come join me now,” she invites, hefting another snowball, bright laughter and mischief in her eyes, and Aravis loses no time in dressing herself in multiple layers against the cold, tying her hair back with a ribbon before pulling a warm hood on over it and rushing down to the courtyard.

It's strange sometimes still, thinking of the liberties she now took - was _invited_ to take - with a ruling monarch, but Lucy would tease if she stood on too much ceremony. Shasta - _Prince Cor_ \- was the same - and after all they had been through, no wonder - but some small portion of her, more accustomed to the formalities of Calormen, the elaborate hierarchy and custom that she, for all her small rebellions and oddities, had been embedded in, still thrilled and quaked in equal measure at this unexpected proximity and familiarity with power in the Northern kingdoms. Lucy is standing in wait for her, gloved hands coated already in clumps of snow from her earlier exercise, her fair hair uncovered, but Aravis knew better by now, dodging out of the way of the first missile that Lucy lets fly and rushing towards her before she can bend to pick up another.

They collide with a gentle impact softened further by the thick layers between them, and Lucy laughs again, catching Aravis against her as she controls their fall back into the snow. It’s an arresting sight as always, and all the more so for the imagined shared warmth of their bodies pressed close.

“I thought you would never wake up.” Lucy teases, pushing herself up from the snow with one arm thrown back before wrapping both around Aravis. “Why is it that you sleep late when I’m the one who traveled so far to see you?”

“Your northern winters are far too cold,” Aravis declares, resting her head briefly against Lucy’s shoulder and hiding a smile against her slightly damp clothes. “It makes far more sense to stay indoors where it is warm when the weather turns, so we can trade tales together by the fire.” She shifts her weight slightly, feigning a dramatic shiver. “But as our honored guest has other plans, I must demonstrate hospitality by accompanying her on her endeavors out of doors, however strange they may be.” And then, with a twinkle of mischief in her own eyes, she pushes Lucy back down into the snow and pins her there, a few strands of hair escaping past the edges of her woolen hood as she reaches for the accumulated pile of snowballs. Lucy gasps in theatrical outrage, and throws her arm out blindly to the side to try and stop her, and the two spring apart as the tussle devolves into an exchange of volleys, Aravis quickly grasping the principles of fighting in the unfamiliar terrain, alternating between scooping up snow in her gloved hands to throw at the merrily laughing Narnian queen and dodging when she does the same in return. Now and again the battle shifts to close quarters, one or the other of them pushed back or tripped into the snow, so icy melt drips down Lucy's unprotected neck and mingles with Aravis’ loosely bound hair, to the accompaniment of shocked exclamations and vows of teasing revenge.

It's an hour or so later, thoroughly soaked with melting snow and chilled in body if not in spirit, when the two finally collapse in a heap together by the fireplace in Aravis’ room again, stripped of their outermost layers for cleaning and curled together on the rug in the last drying layers of their underthings. At some point her dark hair had come entirely loose and she shakes it out with a sigh before she lies back, the damp strands an uneven halo about her head, while Lucy looks on, her own shorter hair gleaming bright in the fire's light, already mostly dried despite being almost completely caked in snow from their earlier antics.

“You dropped something outside,” she observes after a moment, as though the thought had just occurred to her while watching the uneven play of light bringing out burnished highlights in the loose, slightly tangled waves of Aravis’ hair. She reaches out and runs her fingers through them, gently smoothing out a short section, before getting up from the rug. Aravis briefly considers protesting, but Lucy doesn't go far at all, just to the collection of her personal items that she had brought with her from Narnia a few days ago and rummaging briefly before returning and settling down next to Aravis again. “Here, sit up,” she says, one hand holding a hairbrush and in the other a beautiful gold-threaded ribbon of red velvet, her intention obvious. “Now that we’re inside again, I find I _would_ like a tale or two. Will this serve as payment, Lady Aravis?”

Aravis laughs as she sits up. She hardly needed to be bribed to tell a story - and to such an appreciative audience - turning just enough for Lucy to reach her hair comfortably with the hairbrush. This was far from the kind of ceremony that was common at home during any one of the traditional storytelling entertainments that the courts sometimes threw, but she finds it very gratifying all the same. “Of course. Any other requests, Queen Lucy?”

~~~~~

After spending the better part of two seasons in Archenland, there is plenty of work for Lucy to take care of in Narnia as the entire country shakes off the icy sleepiness of winter. While it was fortunate that they had no additional invasions to ward off, there were moments when she almost would have preferred the straightforward distraction of a battle. While Peter is still away at the northern border, the three remaining siblings need to divide up the other tasks of running a kingdom. In moments like this, Lucy can’t help but wonder how other kingdoms, traditionally adhering to no more than two ruling monarchs, manage in times of crisis - even in this relative peace there seemed far too much to do. Susan and Edmund, as usual, divide up the tasks of handling foreign delegations, navigating internal court politics, and meting out justice between them, spending most of their time in Cair Paravel. Lucy, on the other hand, spends the majority of her time on horseback, riding from one end of the kingdom to the other to take care of the minor conflicts and errands that inevitably arose in the newness of spring with the melting of the ice.

Logically, she’s far too busy to miss Aravis overmuch, but in actuality she finds herself thinking back wistfully on the relatively carefree days of her two visits very often. Luckily, there is enough traffic between Narnia and Archenland that letters can be exchanged with relative ease, and she somehow finds the time to write letters at least two or three times a week, a rate which Aravis easily matches and outpaces. They write of commonplace things - exchanging minutiae from their day-to-day. Lucy relates her tribulations from dealing with the mermaids and the brief excitement of a flood in a small village and the work of rebuilding; Aravis expresses impatience with the pace of her various lessons with Prince Cor in Anvard - she was far more advanced in literature and history, but he picked up math and the details of geography in the North with greater ease.

As a jest, Aravis ends each missive by adding on from the thread of one of the stories she’d begun relating during Lucy’s winter visit, the epic plot slowly meandering between locales and characters in the style most common back in Calormen, always cutting off her writing with an excuse (a faulty pen, or the need to receive visitors, or to ride out near the borders) at the most exciting moments only to pick them up again in her next letter. She can’t help but remember one of the first stories Aravis had told her, one that sounded familiar to her, perhaps from England, of the cruel king and the clever princess who he married, spinning out her tales at night to extend her life past each morning. Lucy wonders if Aravis is following in her steps, if she fears Lucy losing interest in their correspondence, particular as the stories and plots grow more and more outrageous.

She wonders how she can reassure her, or tell her that, strangely enough, as much as Lucy loved Aravis’ stories, she found she retained far more from the relaying of the mundanities of her day-to-day life in Anvard and Archenland than from the tales she sketched of princes and princesses and travelers and merchants in distant imaginary lands, from her teasing and affectionate recountings of the twin princes, Cor and Corin, slowly learning how to be family, to the hyperbolic requests for Lucy to return and rescue her from lessons and boredom once again, so they can spar together again. Lucy can only say how much she looks forward to her letters in return, ending each one with a repetition her own requests for Aravis to visit her in Narnia, so she can show her in reality the many places she’d tried to describe in her own poorer way of storytelling, the peaks of the mountains higher than Stormness Head, the dancing of dryads in the depths of the dark forests, the white-crested waves crashing on the beaches around Cair Paravel.

She wants to know how Aravis would describe them, whether they would make their way into her stories just as lions and knights errant and laughing, golden-haired queens had slowly crept in.

~~~~~

Foreign ambassadors and participants were a common sight in Narnia during the tournaments that often served as tests of martial skill and diplomacy both, usually held during the summers to take full advantage of the good weather for travel, and recent events had done nothing to change that tradition. Aslan’s very visible chastisement of Prince Rabadash was fresh in the minds of most, and while there was no decrease in the number of sighing, longing (and calculating) glances directed at Queen Susan, presiding over the tournament in the absence of High King Peter, neither did any of the hopeful princes, kings, or ambassadors take liberties they had not been granted, falling back on excessive courtesy out of an abundance of caution. Lucy can’t help but be relieved by that - and amused at the same time. Edmund was not nearly so handy with a weapon, and it would be bad form for the two of them to follow Susan everywhere, in case they should need to cry insult on some unwise dignitary.

The tournament is carefully sorted by level of skill and style so that each round is as evenly matched and competitive as possible, with a variety of weapons and participants. This was the product of many a sleepless night poring over the lists of participants on Edmund’s part, though the result was well worth it, in Lucy’s opinion. There are even fights that are as much exhibition matches as anything else - a chance to demonstrate a particular skill or technique, or some unusual weapon - or the opportunity to make a chivalrous display for a particular target of affection.

So when a slight, dark haired figure steps out into the arena wielding a scimitar, Lucy doesn’t register why Edmund is grinning so widely for a moment. There were all kinds of competitors in the tournament, with several women among though, though men were far more likely to complete. There was no delegation currently from the Tisroc, but there were other visitors from lands who counted scimitars among their weapons of choice. It’s only when the sunlight shifts just so and she catches sight of a familiar ribbon, glinting gold and red, that she realizes just who that combatant is, ducking well within the range of her opponent with a whirl of grace, catching their blade with the guard of her own and then knocking them unconscious with an unexpected blow from her scabbard, a maneuver they’d practiced forwards and in reverse so many times the past autumn that she can sympathize deeply with the surprise Aravis’ opponent must be feeling.

When it comes time for the victors of the various contests to be presented to the Narnian monarchs, she doesn’t bother to stand on ceremony, to Edmund’s continued amusement and Susan’s approval, only somewhat tempered by longsuffering chagrin at her lack of discretion. “Aravis!” She exclaims, pulling her into an embrace before stepping back to look her over almost disbelievingly. “I didn’t expect you would come to _compete_.”

“Your Majesty said I should come visit,” she replies with surprising equanimity, making a graceful Calormene-style bow, though her clothes are decidedly Northern, as if she’d made peace with both her background and her current circumstance. She’s the very picture of gallantry in her own particular way, not quite a knight out of a fairy tale from back home, but perhaps there was something more like in one of Aravis’ stories. Lucy’s eyes cannot help but catch on the shine of gold thread in her dark hair as she tilts her head. “Besides, I could not leave you without a champion.”

“She already has your favor, after all,” Susan points out with gentle teasing, her tone , leaning into their conversation, and Lucy startles, coloring faintly at the reminder. “Perhaps that will dissuade a few of your own suitors, dear sister.” Lucy glances up in surprise and annoyance, a denial on the tip of her tongue - how exactly would such suitors notice her, next to the beauty of her sister? - but the expression on Aravis’ face is the very definition of self-satisfaction and triumph, though she is all outward politeness as she accepts Susan’s quiet formal congratulations.

It is only now that Susan pointed it out that Lucy is noticing the curious glances around them, some of them wearing expressions that were familiar from dealing with Susan’s swains, but that had barely registered when directed at her, until this moment. But it is clear that her siblings - and Aravis - had anticipated, observed, and taken steps of their own.

“And don’t you owe your champion a proper prize, sister?” Edmund adds, not-quite-grinning, though only for the sake of propriety, his eyes bright with unrepressed amusement. Susan turns her slightly exasperated expression on him now, but Aravis’ previous expression dissolves quickly into a quiet hope. Almost without a second thought, Lucy just shakes her head, but before Aravis can turn away, disappointed but resigned, she takes both her hands in her own and pulls her in for a very public kiss.

~~~~~Epilogue~~~~

It's all a bit much to take in still, the abruptness of the events since they’d gotten on the train, for all that she had experience already, even though she was surrounded by the pleasantly familiar, bright and real in a way she almost couldn’t recognize - and yet did in a way that was joyfully difficult to comprehend. After the initial chaos and excitement - the happy and tearful reunions, the exclamations of recognition and pleasure, the nostalgic recounting of vastly different times and places and events, all gathered together where they had never truly coexisted before - Lucy wanted a few moments to sort things through in her own mind. The blur of old friends and faces - miraculously restored - the shock of which she’d had to overcome already, after that first sharp loss, the impossible passage of years they’d been stepping into and out of since their second visit - was overwhelming and bittersweet. She was something like seventeen ( _again,_ in body if not truly in spirit), surrounded by friends new and old who remembered her older and wiser, her memories - not in conflict but in apposition - an overlay of experience behind her gestures that was not quite settled into her new reality, just as had happened before to a child not yet ten, yearning for another world with no notion of being able to return ever again.

She’d seen _her_ in those moments of reunion, standing with her family, the ones she had met and known so well during the first golden years and the ones she’d never seen at all after stepping out of Narnia and into history, becoming legend in the blink of an eye. She was happy for her, of course, and it was no more painful than the first time, counting the decades and changes and concluding the inevitability of separation brought about by so much and so many kinds of distance between them. But despite Aslan’s reassurance that this was the last time, with the beauty of essential transcendence around her, Narnia at her most radiant and perfect in a way she’d never attained to even in that Golden Age, Lucy can’t help but feel some lack.

Her steps take her into the mountains, hoping to draw some serenity from the crispness of the chiller air and the scent of pine boughs. It’s not perfect solitude - even here there were dryads dancing among the trees, birds flying overhead, a few other animals pausing in their business to incline their heads in recognition and respect - but it helps clear her head. The thin crunch of snow underfoot, piling higher the further she hikes towards the twin peaks of Mount Pire, reminds her of those first moments of wonder two lifetimes ago, stepping past a rack of coats and into a wonderland of winter, without a hint of what was to come, and she settles down on a rock, gaining some measure of peace. _This_ was Narnia as much as the rest, a place _and_ its people, however much they both might change.

A snowball hits the back of her head, and she whirls, jumping to her feet, not even sure what to expect. A particularly playful dryad, or perhaps even one of her brothers, hoping to surprise her out of her pensive mood?

But she sees _Aravis_ , looking not as she had before, older and almost matronly, with one proud hand on her son Ram’s shoulder and the other linked with Cor’s, smiling in dignified greeting at friends and subjects and allies alike, but the Aravis she always saw in her mind’s eye from the months before the fateful hunt for the White Stag, dark eyes bright with mischief, a flash of red and shining gold in her tied back hair. And Lucy’s heart leaps for a moment, her mind whirling with the remembrance of possibility. Because of course, though each chapter in this place might be better than the last, as Aravis had taught her, each successive story was built upon, not destroyed. Just as the Lucy who was Queen in Narnia, who had loved and been loved by Aravis, had been within the Lucy who stepped back through the wardrobe into the British countryside, and so on, surely in this place the best of Aravis as she had been at every age would not be out of reach…

“Dearest Lucy,” Aravis says, her expression soft with affection, merry with youth and wise with the passage of years, coming close to take Lucy’s hands in hers and raise them to her mouth for a kiss. “I’m so glad we have time for another story.”

**Author's Note:**

> For Nabielka: Many thanks for the amazing prompt! I am not sure I managed to do it justice, but I hope I have at least touched on some of the things you wanted to see!


End file.
